Who is to blame for the Katrina response?

Local officials were overwhelmed quickly, and the head of FEMA, Michael Brown, has testified that he was unaware of the magnitude of the disaster until Thursday, four days after the eye of Katrina passed over land.

Now we find out that he had constant updates from his assistant who was on site in New Orleans, beginning Sunday before Katrina hit. From the Washington Post

Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA regional director, told a Senate panel investigating the government's response to the disaster that he gave regular updates to people in contact with then-FEMA Director Michael Brown as early as Aug. 28, one day before Katrina made landfall.

In most cases, he was met with silence. In an Aug. 29 phone call to Brown informing him that the first levee had broke, Bahamonde said he received a polite thank you from Brown, who said he would check with the White House.

"I think there was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation," Bahamonde said.

The Republicans in the Bush administration appear to be leader-oriented. The leader decides what is to be done and passes orders down, but does not respond to information coming back up the chain of command. The plan is real to them, and reality is not allowed to interfere with the plan.

Note Brown's response above. "Bahamonde said he received a polite thank you from Brown, who said he would check with the White House." First, he is untrained and not competent; second, he has to wait for instructions from the White House before he can act himself. Brown probably got the same response from the White House that he gave to Bahanibde - silence.

This is what you get when you fill vacancies with strong ideologues who have no record of successful accomplishment.

The reason for a national organization to respond to disastors is to back up local organizations when they are overwhelmed and disrupted by the disastor. Katrina was too large for anyone in New Orleans to handle, and the evacuees were too many for any single state to deal with. Katrina (and Rita) were a national emergency, and FEMA simply failed to respond adequately.